Parenting in the Teen Years with Ellen Galinsky EP 356

surprised we haven't talked to her about that. Specifically, as she is very much in favor of women having choices about what they do and how that children can thrive under different types of circumstances. But more recently she's focused on the teen years and wrote a very comprehensive book called The Breakthrough Years, putting together her own kind of unique style of research and findings and a lot of

kind of primary source material from teens themselves. She went right to the real source here, which I think is refreshing and really really cool. So definitely a fun book to check out. But Laura, you're a teen expert too at this point, I feel like when you.

with you. That's actually pretty awesome. And so if that is a development over time, I'm here for it. Like if my kids want to hang out with me, I am very excited about that and flattered that that might be the case.

Actually I was a teacher of young children, and I know what we thought we were teaching them, but I didn't know what they were actually learning. So they were preschool kids. So I made a model classroom and asked them to pretend to be at school. And their visions of school were so different than the actual experiences that we thought we were giving them. It was shocking. You know. They had the very cultural This was a school where the kids chose activities, They had a lot of hands

on experience. The schools that they made these little children were, you know, little rows of desks and raise your hand, and the culture what a school is was so strongly influencing them. Even then, I have found in throughout the years that the answers are not what we would expect. It's just a very exciting life. When I had a first child, I wondered about how we as a culture helped people transition into parenthood, and then wrote a book

about that. Sometimes I start with the idea of a book, sometimes I don't, but that began a book that just was in me, that was bursting out. I just had, I had to write that one, and then I got interested in how parents grow, and there wasn't very much literature, so I had to actually do an exploratory study, and that became a book, and I started to do series of studies. After doing research on wrote a book about childcare. In the United States, childcare was seen as very evil

at the time, stranger danger. You know, you wouldn't why shouldn't you just stay at home and take care of your children? But increasingly that wasn't the reality of most people's lives, and so I wanted to find good childcare around the country and look at what made it work, and that became a book. And then in listening to those the stories of parents and the stories of families. When we were interviewing and doing the research for the book on childcare, I began to see that there was

the secret thing that people had. It didn't even have a name, but it was managing work in family life. So we're talking a while ago. But it wasn't cold work in family life. It wasn't cold work life. If it wasn't called any of those sorts of things. Then then I started an organization and did a series of studies and in the course of doing those studies, I wanted to interview not only the spouse of the employee, because we were doing studies about the employees, I wanted

to also interview the kids. And I found that kids it was like the image that I had was that parents and children were looking through the same picture window, but they were seeing different scenery, a whole different vista, very different. And so that led me into what became a book called Ask the Children, which is how kids feel about their working parents and so on. You know, some of the books are intentional, some of them aren't.

But often when I feel like I have enough to say and people don't know it, and it's often about bursting the miss you know, the assumptions that we make, then it becomes a book.

I get back into those childcare issues and the issues you just mentioned, because that is just so near and dear to our hearts and the hearts of our audience. So that is super cool and I love that. So at the same time, you have had a little bit of a recent pivot, not really, because actually there's clearly a common thread, which is that A you like to do your own research, and B you like to go

straight to the source, not necessarily the adult source. But can you talk a little bit about how you have kind of focused in on teens and adolescents over the recent past with your new work.

not that I'm so brilliant. It's that I know how to listen, you know, I just I would ask employers what keeps you up at night? What are you worrying about? And then put it into the study. I would ask employees the same question, put it into the study. And so it's always breaking new grounds. Civic science is and I'm thankful for you for doing a podcast on it, because there wasn't enough discussion then and there still isn't enough discussion now.

it up, it's too late. And people felt that way about my book Mind and the Making, and I was like, no, no, no, no, no, we have to carry it through. Foundations are critical, you know, they're the house of on a foundation, but you still building the architecture upwards, and we need to pay attention to the older years or we're not going to really help kids grow and learn and thrive. And all of my work has been around helping families learn and thrive.

I mean, there's the common theme in it. But I started out civic science by going to young people themselves and saying, what do you want to know about your own development? What should I ask the researchers who study people your age if you had one wish to improve the lives of people your age, what would that wish be? Or what questions do you have about yourself? And what

don't you understand about yourself? Just a lot of open ended questions, which you can do when you're starting something, and it took me in a completely different direction than I thought I was going. If you just read the research on adolescents, you would go in one direction, but if you talk to them, you go in a completely

different direction. And they're what they say. Said to me that we talked to thirty eight fourteen to eighteen year olds from around the country, even from other parts of the world, and they said, why don't people like teenagers? That's simple, like, look at us, We're not the stereotypic teenagers. Who is you know? That got me to look into

what is our societal conception of teenagers of adolescents? And they wanted, you know, I asked the question in the eventual nationally representative study that I did, I ask what do you want to tell adults about people your age? And they wanted it to be comprehensive. So it is a comprehensive book. It is, you know, most books are here's you know, here's my point, and you know, I'm going to tell you what I'm going to tell you, and now I'm telling you, and now I told you

kind of a thing. They wanted a comprehensive story. That's why they're five messages from young people about what they want us to know, and it actually aligned with the research, the new research. I call it the breakthrough years because these are breakthrough years for kids, but also researchers have had so many breakthroughs in how they understand adolescens, so breakthrough on both sides.

kind of prophecy. That's like Laura and I's least favorite phrase, just in general, like just you wait, because often we find that either it's not true and that it potentially causes a lot of unnecessary angst. So I would love you to delve in to kind of how you addressed this particular sentiment I think, especially around teenagers, and how it might actually do some damage.

perfect little person. You know. Now he was big. It was all of almost five pounds. He had ten little fingers and ten little toes. And I just was thrilled to this little person now who was finally in my house. And a neighbor came home over to see him, to welcome him to the world, and she said, just wait to lease a teenager. And it was like, what, you know, I just am feeling so much joy and I've been through such agony over you know, would he be healthy,

would he survive? You know, with foreign prematurely, that's scary. And now I've got this jail like since hanging over my head for the next ten years or something. Uh So I asked that in the study, I ask how many people have had heard just wait, And sixty one percent of parents in a nationally representative group have heard

just wait until they're teenagers. Interestingly, to me, parents did something else, which is I'd say I'd start the in person interviews that I did in between the two national studies. I'd start the in person interviews saying, like, if I were someone from another country, tell me what it's like to be the parent of a child your age, and they would to a person, they would say, I'm lucky,

my kid's okay, my kid isn't this terrible person. So it's just the consent options of what adolescents are supposed to be, Like, they're so embedded in us that there were the opening gambit to every conversation I had with parents.

adults what they're conceptions of the team brain were. I came out of sitting at a conference on neuroscience with neuroscientists where they were debating what public thought about teenagers, and I thought, well, I'll just ask, and so I did, and we don't understand them. What I found is that only fourteen percent of parents use positive words, twenty seven percent use neutral words, fifty nine percent use negative words. The most frequent negative word, by eleven percent, was immature,

and then another eight percent. So almost one in five of us think of our adolescence as deficit adults, and we don't understand that they're acting the way that they're programmed to act. Their brain is priming them to be exploratory, to have strong emotional reactions to things as they figure out how to move out into the world and to become whom they want to be or to be whom

they want to be. So it's it's normal, it's developmentally completely, it's development necessary for them to be this way, and yet we don't you know, a lot of us don't understand that. So that I think was a very important finding that we actually our adult perspectives. It's called the curse of knowledge in cognitive science, where we now know something, then we don't remember not knowing it. We can't see

the world without knowing it. I think that part of that is true in how we think about teenagers.

have these very heightened feelings. They're like emotional detectors. I thought of it like a Geiger counter. If anyone remembers what they are. You know, where you go around and you can find metal in the soil. They're supposed to be able to be sensitive to emotions. How else will they know who are the people that they want to be with, Who are the people who make them feel safe as they move further from the home. I don't believe that there's sort of something called independence that they

separate and are never connected to us. Again, you know that we're always interdependent. In my book The Six Stages of Parenthood, I called it the stage of interdependence. But they're moving out far, they're into the world, and they need that ability to be an emotional detector.

you'll get over it. Explain that they're supposed to have those feelings. If they I mean, they really want to understand it, they will say, oh, I didn't know that was normal. I didn't know we were supposed to feel this way. So listen, listen more than you talk, they said, Listen with an understanding of their development. And then I

think also help them learn to solve problems. I ask young people for three you know, the most important parenting or teaching skills, and they said, listen more than you talk. Listen with when I was a child's mind as well as now I'm an adult mind, So take their perspective and then if we're the problem, then we need to be part of the solution. Using young people's words here, but they need to develop the ability to solve problems

for themselves. So using autonomy supportive practices or I call them skill building practices, is a way to help them learn the skills to manage the world rather than fixing things for them.

getting to practice. The research on executive function skills is maybe twenty or so years old by that name anyway, And yet if you walk into a classroom a group of I'm working with the ASAY, which is the school Superintendent organization, and they're always saying, if you walk into a group of superintendents and you asked them to hold up their hand if they've heard executive function, not many

people will raise their hand. And if they do, they'll think it has to do with problems with executive function, which is ADHD or other learning problems, or it has to do with organizing, or it has to do you know, making tabs in your notebooks, or it has to do with being able to sit still and be compliant and listen to the teacher, and those are all parts of it, but it is these are the skills of learning. These are how we learn. They are the most important skills.

And so I think that we need to you ask what we should do. And I think it's helping children become aware of how they learn, not just what they learn. We focus a lot on what they learn, but how they learn. So when did you figure out You know, you struggled with getting your homework done, but this time you did it and it wasn't such a struggle. What was different? How did you manage that? What did you

learn from that? Or you're doing some project on the river, let's say, or you know science that looks at how rivers develop, in the function of rivers in society, making it up, but not just what did you learn about rivers? But how did you learn best? What helped you learn something? How does your memory work? So executive function is an umbrella concept. It's not us thing. It's a set of sub skills. There are four sub skills that I think

are important. They are working memory, which means using what you know. It's not enough to memorize something, you have to be able to use it put it to action. It is being able to think flexibly. Because the world changes and we need to change with it. We need to understand other people's point of view. That's just one example of thinking flexibly. That everybody doesn't think the way we do, and understanding different perspectives is really critically important

to surviving in society. It's reflecting that isn't often seen as an executive function skill. These are attention regulation skills. The attention when we reflect is internal intention attention, not just external attention. We're paying attention to ourselves, we're pausing, we're stepping back. It does take place in a different part of the brain than default mode network, but it is highly linked to executive function skills, so I put

it in there. And then finally self control, which is doing what you need to do, not going on automatic, but doing what you need to do to achieve a goal. So these are the core skills, and they're the building blocks of things that we know are important, like setting goals or perspective taking or communicating or collaborating or problem solving or taking on challenges. Those are the five skills that I outline that are very important, and each of them has sub skills that go along with it.

little off base. So was there anything you discovered while you were doing this research that you might have done differently yourself, or you kind of like have seen being done that you wish could turn around.

want to call it criticism or advice, very seriously. I didn't realize how absolutely exceptional that was until I started spending the night with other kids and saw that there you know, that would have been seen as back talk. We had to be very polite if we told mother that we didn't agree with the decision she made, but we could say it, and very often she would listen. Not always she was the boss, but that was something

that I just did with my children. And when I asked my children the question that you just asked me, because I figured that someone was going to ask me that what should I do differently? They said I made a lot of mistakes, but the thing that I always did was listen to them and do something, you know, really listen very hard and try to change if something wasn't working very well. So I did that. And they also said my son said that I didn't prejudge his friends,

that they could be from really different backgrounds. They were always welcome. I wasn't prejudiced against some people. He really valued that because he saw a lot a lot of parents who had preseid ideas, you don't hang out with these kids. You do hang out with these kids. And my son also said that I really valued his pursuing his interests. He is a musician. He played the drum. Other parents could find that annoying, I assume, but I found it wonderful that he brought music into our lives.

And you know now as his doctorate in music and just got selected today as the you know in New York State is the artist's the best artistic contribution as an entrepreneur in the state. I mean, that's like, wow, that's pretty amazing. He would say that it's because if that's what he always wanted to do, and he always wanted to do music, that I was like helping him resident saying, you know, why don't you be a lawyer

or something. I think the thing that I would do differently is to pause more, not to react as quickly, the importance of reflection, of stepping back and not just reacting, so that learn from looking at the research. For sure.

So people say, oh, it's causal. The latest science shows that it's not causal. Phones can be harmful for some kids if they're used too much, or if the kids are already struggling with certain issues. They were not designed for children. They need to be designed for adolescents and for younger children. The endless scroll, the likes, the figures that are perfect when you feel so imperfect. All of

those things aren't particularly healthy. We need ways of making phones better, but we also need to appreciate that they open up the world of possibilities to young people. I've been on a task force in consulting with a federal government that is looking at the whole issue of kids online health and safety, and we're very careful to state the benefits as well as the potential harms. The potential benefits.

The best review of the literature out there for people who really want to look at the literature besides my chapter, which I'm still pretty proud of, is there's a whole section in the book on the Digital World is The National Academy of Sciences released a report in December that summarizes the research on what we know now and what we need to know about phones, and the American Psychological Association just a few days ago came out with another advisory.

So the world is trying to catch up with the latest bad guy. We've had bad guys before. I've seen them come and go, so we have to put it in perspective. I think two other thoughts about phones. One is that it's a really great place for us to help kids learn self control. They are meant their designed to be addictive. They want you to do that endless scroll. They're rewarding, you know, if you get likes, you want to see how you stay in. Of course, the imaginary

audience for teenagers becomes a real audience. You can see how people react to what you post, and so we need to help them learn how to manage this. And if we can help them learn that, just think of all of the things that feel addictive in life can be well managed if we give them that foundational skill. And then I think we need to worry about what phones are displacing. If they're displacing being outside and running, that's a time for creativity. It's a time to feel

more centered, it's a time to be physically active. We need that. If they're replacing sleep, I'd love the research in the book that Rick hugen Ar that I report on from Rick Hugenar at the John Hopkins where he's discovered that memories getsolidated during sleep, so they're essential to learning. They're not just being rested and rest in recovery. They are really essential to learning. So we need to manage phone use but not freak out about it. And it hasn't.

Has the kids told me and know in certain terms the internet is not going to be the death of the whole generation.

He knows how much I love my two dogs, and he wanted to give me another dog, but instead he gave me a stuffed animal that is big, white and fluffy labradoodle and it is just adorable and I'm very much in love with him and with this labradoodle that I now have.

So not sharing my trade secrets here, but I did it for Ellen, and I've done it for many guests in the past, but I've also done it for other random people that I've become interested in, because then you might expose you to some new podcas, new perspectives, et cetera. And I don't think I realized you could do that until recently. But yeah, you can search for the subject of the podcast, not just the title. So thank you

so much for coming on. This was amazing and as I said, can't wait to Delvin even deeper with a fine tooth calm. Just remind our listeners the full name of your book and of course where they can find you.

really is a framework. It's comprehensive. Adolescents wanted us to fully understand them, so the book takes the five messages that were most important to them and fully explores them.

about deciding to have kids number four and five. I have three kids and I'm probably done, but maybe not. And I'm also interested in the logistics. Did you store all the baby stuff or give it away and buy more later?

But yeah, we don't really get the question of should I have a fourth kid or should I have a fifth kid.

without trying for five, Like you don't have to make that as a joint decision for you know how many more you're going for. You can simply say, well, maybe we're open to a fourth and have a fourth. And if you have a fourth and decide it's the most awesome thing in the world, and you want to have even more kids and you don't feel done, then you can go for a fifth. But maybe you will have that feeling after four like, Okay, that's plenty, my family

is complete. I can tell everyone that I feel very complete after five, which was not necessarily how I had felt, for sure after number three or four. So I mean, partly it's that I'm old, like I don't think we're having more kids at this point anyway, But I certainly have that feeling of my family feeling complete in a way that I didn't one hundred percent earlier.